Let's get one thing out of the way: Robert F. Kennedy's claim that he wants to "make America healthy again" is, like most things he says, a flat-out lie. Donald Trump's nominee to run Health and Human Services (HHS) is a conspiracy theorist who opposes not just vaccines but science-based medicine generally, promoting a bunch of "alternatives" that are often actively bad for people. Certainly, Kennedy and his defenders pretend to believe in healthy eating and exercise. As journalist Michael Hobbes pointed out on Bluesky, however, such rhetoric is one of the fig leaves vaccine critics use "to make their ideas seem palatable." Most of what Kennedy claims is "healthy" is very much not. Even when Kennedy mixes in a couple of truly healthy ideas, like eating vegetables, into the mix, he does so to promote the lie that the medical establishment supposedly discourages this behavior.
This is a list of things that are either: A) 'suppressed' because they are quack bullshit (raw milk, chelating compounds) or B) not remotely 'suppressed'! Every health agency in the country already promotes vitamins and sunshine.
— Michael Hobbes (@michaelhobbes.bsky.social) December 13, 2024 at 11:54 AM
To pretend Kennedy is just a healthy guy asking people to eat better, Republicans have suddenly discovered a yearning desire for people to drop the French fries for some broccoli. During a Senate hearing with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner earlier this month, ranking member Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., laughably claimed that "promoting healthy foods is a top priority" for the incoming Trump administration, throwing in Kennedy's "make America healthy again" slogan, as a boot-licking flourish to his opening remarks.
This feigned concern for American diets is especially silly because it wasn't all that long ago that these same Republicans were worked into a lather of outrage at then-First Lady Michelle Obama for suggesting kids should eat better and run around outside sometimes. CNN recently ran a supercut of Obama-era Republicans falsely claiming Obama was coming into their homes to confiscate salty or fatty foods.
WATCH: “There was another person who tried to raise concerns about the health of the food we feed our children…” CNN’s Abby Phillip shows a supercut of how Hannity and other Republicans attacked Michelle Obama for what they’re now turning RFK Jr. into a hero for.
— The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler.bsky.social) November 14, 2024 at 11:28 PM
One of Trump's first moves in his previous term was to end government regulations keeping school lunches healthy so that schools could claim pizza is a "vegetable." Now the same Republicans who acted like they were being murdered by Michelle Obama's carrots are suddenly talking like they've always been down with good nutrition.
Republicans are always engaging in bad-faith partisan politics, of course, but one reason this about-face is such an easy sell with the MAGA masses is plain old misogyny. GOP pundits found it easy to tar Obama with a sexist stereotype of the joy-kill mom telling kids to eat their vegetables. I'll leave it to readers to speculate what it says about MAGA voters that they so easily slotted themselves into the role of recalcitrant children.
Kennedy, however, sells his phony "health" brand with hyper-macho imagery. He posts videos of himself working out shirtless and associates with dudebro influencers like Joe Rogan, whose constant chatter about nutrition is often tied to merch websites that sell overpriced and ineffective supplements. The "manosphere" of masculinity influencers is marketed largely through a "self-help" lens, promising men better romantic and financial lives. So it makes sense that there's an increasing overlap with the "wellness" industry.
But "wellness" is not health. In many cases, the two are in direct conflict. "Wellness" is best understood as an elite alternative to the proletarian "health." To use airplane tickets as a metaphor, "wellness" is first class, and "health" is economy. Especially as developed countries expand health care access, the baseline concepts of health — eating right, exercise, vaccination, regular doctor visits, blood pressure and cancer screenings — become associated with working-class people. It's not a coincidence that "wellness" took off after the Affordable Care Act was passed. When poorer people can go to the doctor regularly, the elite want something different to set themselves apart. Let the hoi polloi have vaccines. The wealthy will eat expensive organic foods and tell themselves it's a superior form of defense against disease.
Much of what gets marketed as "wellness," by Kennedy and other grifters, is actively bad for people's health. For instance, Kennedy falsely claims that Americans are "being unknowingly poisoned" by vegetable-based oils, and should switch to animal fats like lard or butter. On Thanksgiving, he put up a video where he deep-fried a turkey in beef tallow, ridiculously claiming it's healthier than, say, roasting it in the oven. It should go without saying that this is exactly the opposite of the truth, and not because of the risk of burning down your $4 million mansion. But sure, as a reminder: Beef tallow, lard, and butter are all high in saturated fat, that stuff that gives you heart attacks and strokes. Seed oils like canola should be used in moderation, but they aren't nearly as dangerous to your heart as beef and pork fat.
But a lot of people, especially right-wing men, are eager to hear that artery-clogging fats are good for you now because vegetables are coded as "feminine" and meat as "masculine." Kennedy is following other masculinity grifters, like Jordan Peterson or the Liver King, who have used gender anxieties to sell men on the false notion that hamburgers are healthier than salads. But this is also about class. Beef tallow and butter cost more than canola oil, and deep-frying a turkey requires pricey equipment and space — like that now-burned mansion — that is often not available to working-class people.
As Hobbes points out, once you look past Kennedy's surface-level rhetoric to his actual positions, he's a bog-standard Republican who wants to repeal a slew of government regulations that protect people from disease, food poisoning, and pollution. The focus on "wellness" should be understood not as an effort to improve America's health, but as an excuse for tearing up systems that protect people. Implicit in "wellness" rhetoric is the idea that poor health is strictly a result of personal choices, which are subjected to moralizing judgment. If scaling back vaccines leads to people dying, the victims will be blamed for not eating beef tallow. Cuts to health care will be justified by claims that it's up to ordinary people to do more push-ups so they don't "need" doctors. If air pollution leads to higher rates of childhood asthma, the parents will be blamed for not buying supplements from Joe Rogan. This is just the "personal responsibility" grift Republicans have used forever, but repackaged with heavily gendered "wellness" trappings.
